Reaching down, I picked up a sand dollar, small and perfect, fingering it.
He gave me the key to his ridiculously huge truck.
He bought me vegan Pea Soup Andersen soup. And sweet and salty local, responsible ice cream.
He quit chewing tobacco, immediately.
He donated his property to helping kids like Charles and Janiqua. He cared. He wanted to make the world better too. He didn't want development around him. He grew organic produce. He raised his animals humanely. He ran a legacy family business with grit and pride.
Then I thought about the way he looked at me when I called him my boyfriend. The way he looked at me always.
He was incredible.
I threw the sand dollar into the surf, watching it splash.
Fuck, I was in love with him and I didn't even know it. I couldn't admit it to myself because I had tried all summer to keep a distance, to not analyze, to not let myself fall for him. But it had happened anyway.
And I had been in love with him for a very long time.
It didn't just happen right now. It happened a while ago.
But I just realized it now.
I’d been fighting it all summer long, throwing up excuses, walls, barriers, because of fear. But now, my heart felt like it had cracked open the whole way. Amelia was right. I’d needed to open it. I’d tried to keep it shut.
But this guy had gotten through to me.
For every bit that he was gruff, he was kind. For every bit that he fought with me, it was with a twinkle in his eye—at least most of the time. He didn't care that I had my tattoos or my eyebrow ring. He didn't care that I was the daughter of migrant farmworkers. He didn't care that I swore all the time or called him names.
Maybe I should tone that down.
But he took the time to do what I wanted. He thought about me.
And I, him. I wanted him to be happy. I didn't want him worried about sick horses or a disabled mom or stupid developers or taxes or his blueberry crop. I wanted him swearing in pleasure as I sucked him off. I wanted him sleeping peacefully. I wanted him, period, and all the things that came with him—dog, ranch, politics, all of it.
Because I loved his dog Trixie. I loved his four-generation ranch. I loved his surly Republican-ness. I loved his efficient way of talking, using just one word if he could get away with it. I loved the way he dressed in Wranglers and boots. I loved the way he danced in dark, dusty steakhouses.
I loved the way he slept next to me, cuddling me all night long. And I loved the way he explored my body sexually, waking me up. And I loved the way he gave me the space I needed to figure this all out.
And then I started crying for real. Ugly, loud tears. Because if I loved him, then I didn't want to leave him. This pain was what I’d been protecting myself against all summer. It wasn't just sex. It was more. And I didn't want to go back to my studio in Santa Barbara. I wanted to live with him forever and love him and fight him and drool over him and lick him and have his babies. I wanted to talk with him and dance with him and eat every vegan or non-vegan meal with him.
Hell, if I really thought about it, I wanted to marry him.
And I’d never felt this way about another person in my life. That magnet that symbolized our relationship? The one where we were either completely repelled or completely together? It was turned so that we were stuck and that was it. Once I allowed the feelings to open, they were all in. All of them. I had all of the feelings for Will.
Fuck.
I turned and ran up the path to the bluff.
When I got to the top of the bluff, sweating, panting, I kept running. I ran back the trail to the compound, past the horses, and into Will's house, without knocking, without stopping, yelling, "Will! Will?"
He appeared at the top of the stairs, the hard look on his face showing me that he was still pissed at me.
So I yelled from the bottom of the stairs, "I fucking love you, Will Thrash. I’ve never loved anyone in my life as much as I love you. Don't you ever leave me, you asshole."
He stared at me, not saying anything. His jaw ticked.
I continued. “I’m sorry I had my head up my ass all summer. I was scared and I didn’t know what to do. You make me feel like home. You comfort me. You protect me. I don’t hide anything from you.”
He gripped the top of the stairs, not moving, not saying anything.
“I love you. Say something, goddamn it.”
His eyes were the darkest I’d ever seen them, his hair wild and so sexy. “You gonna change your mind again, Marie?”
“Never,” I said fiercely.
He let go of the bannister and took a step back, shaking his head. “You gonna keep looking for a fight?”
“Not intentionally.”
He stared at me. “You gonna quit pushing me away?”
“Yes,” I gasped.
“Then c’mere, baby,” he said, and those were the sweetest words I’d ever heard.
And I ran up the stairs and into his open arms.
"I love you too," he said, "and I will never leave you." And he held me as I crashed into him, kissing him with whatever breath I had left after my run from the beach. He lifted me up and I wrapped my legs around him, holding him as close as I could, and he spun me around, then pressed me against the wall.
I broke our kiss, still crying, a total mess. "Don't make me go away at the end of summer," I sobbed into his shoulder. "Let me stay with you. I can't go. I can't be away from you." He held me against the wall and kissed me again. Then he let me down, but still kept his arms around me, his face the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. And his next words made me feel a sweet relief, like all the burden of the summer had lifted.
"Then don't. Stay here. I'll take care of you. You can get your degree—it's not that long of a commute—and set up your therapy practice and do whatever you want. You can see your friends whenever they want."
I took a deep breath. "I'm moving in."
He blew out his breath as a sigh of relief. "About time."
"Are we still waiting out the week?"
"Yeah." He paused. "But I'm not opposed to engaging in the loophole, though."
"What looph—" I paused. "Oh."
"Come on in the shower," he said, "and we'll get the sweat off of you and the dust off of me. But no touching."
"Okay," I said. "Just like when we first met."
He grinned.
Spill
"WHAT DO YOU THINK of your experiment, Marie? Your two-week sexual hiatus?" asked Will.
"We still have a week to go," I answered, snuggling into him, front to front, my head in his bare chest, in his antique bed that night. I felt comfy in my light pink tank top and blue plaid pajama shorts. We were both peaceful now, having picked enough fights with each other for the time being. "It's too early to tell. So far so good. You’re overwhelming, big guy. The sex is too good." I looked up and could see the smirk on his face. "I needed to take a break to sort out my head. But it seemed to work."
He leaned over and kissed me. "Yeah," he said. "You did. You finally get your shit together?"
I nodded. "I think so. I’ve never been like this. I've never allowed a guy in or anyone, really. I don't know, I just somehow got the idea that I needed to be fun all the time. But if you're fun all the time, you don't get to the deeper stuff. It's like all desserts and no vegetables. I’d never really let myself be open with another person, except for Amelia, and that's different. Sure, I had crushes, and sure I had liked guys and had sex—"
"Not sure I wanna hear this part," he complained, eyes amused.
"But no one, ever, has made me feel the way you do. I dated a lot. I partied a lot. I laughed and drank and had fun. It was all light, though. There was no depth to it. I never fell. Not for real, in a sense that was open and honest. No one ever showed me the stars like you do."
He squeezed me. "I get it, darlin'."
"So we're going to keep this moratorium up for another week?" I asked.
&nbs
p; "Yeah." He lazed a hand down my arm.
"Why?"
"I think we agreed on it so we should do it," he responded, his eyes liquid. "I want us to keep our promises to each other."
I liked that answer. Still. "Did we cheat in the shower?"
He grinned his half-smile. "I didn't fuck you, so no." And he kissed me. When we broke apart, I had to find my breath.
"Okay," I agreed.
In the shower, he hadn't touched me and I didn't touch him, but it was hot. Seeing him take care of himself while I took care of myself? Erotic as hell. Both of us looking into each other's eyes, the water flowing around us, the need there, but no touching each other. It felt intimate in a way I'd never been intimate before. That was definitely part of the reason why we were both so relaxed right now. That, and finally confessing our feelings for each other.
Now that I realized it, I’d felt my extraordinary feelings for him all along. I was just a dumb shit for not identifying them and for thinking of reasons to not let them in.
So where would we go from here?
Curiosity came over me. "Are you going to tell me what you are going to do to me on Friday? What is the anything?"
He kissed me softly, ran his finger down my cheek, and said with his lowest voice, "If I had to pick right now? Making love to you, very slowly, taking my time, exploring your body with my mouth and my fingers and then my cock, making you hum, then making you come. Games can wait."
Fuck me. "That'd work," I muttered, nonchalantly, and totally faking it. Then I snuggled into him again. "But no. I want to see you kinky. You've held back with me. I want to see it."
He buried his nose in my hair and said, "You want it, you got it. I'll have to go to the store. Need supplies. But I'm not telling. Man's gotta have some secrets."
"No he doesn't. Spill."
"Nope."
Shit.
Cuddling with my cowboy, I took a moment to acknowledge how good it felt to be in the arms of this good man that I loved—yes, loved, but who also could work my body the way he did.
It felt like I had completely shed myself of a layer of old, dead skin that didn't fit me anymore. Sure, there were more layers underneath, but it felt like I had unburdened myself from some of my crap. And to know that he loved me back, and had been showing it practically since we met? Awesome.
And I was thrilled beyond belief to find out what he planned next. We went to sleep and when we woke up, we spent most of the rest of the weekend together. He did the rounds of the ranch Saturday morning, and we both checked on Happy, for whom the crisis had passed, although we were still on alert.
Saturday afternoon, after lunch with his parents, he took me for a walk along the beach with Trixie. He brought a tennis ball with him and threw it for Trixie to catch. At one point, he threw it, and Trixie ran in the water on her way to catch it and got totally wet, coming back and shaking all over us. We kept our hands off of each other, but I'll admit that it was harder than usual to do so, seeing him all wet in a white t-shirt sticking to his farm boy sculpted torso.
Later on, we drove to Ryan's beach house to join him and Amelia for dinner, taking advantage of the classic California summer evening, clear and comfortable at the beach, with a slight breeze. I didn't know how Amelia hooked one who could cook and liked to do so, but Ryan cooked for all of us while Amelia and I sat outside on the deck, gossiping, catching up, watching the surf and surfers, and drinking chilled white wine. Ryan cooked barbecued chicken. He was so sweet, though, because the rest of the meal was vegan, with a lentil salad, herbed rice, a huge green salad, and a vegan cake from Trader Joe's, a place that was apparently an obsession of his. He also refused help from anyone. While the girls were outside, Trixie curled up at Will's feet, who sat on a bar stool inside, drinking beer and talking to Ryan about farming.
Amelia went on for at least twenty minutes about the table settings for her wedding, but she didn't seem to care too much about the dress, cake, guest list, or anything else. That was my girl.
"So you're going to be my maid of honor, right?" she finally asked me.
"Girl? I thought you'd never ask. Although that's not really asking, that's telling. You've been hanging around a bossy guy too long."
She laughed. "Bossy guys can be hot if they love you." Then she continued. "I'm so glad you got your head out of your ass, girl. What the fuck? How come you took so long to get it about your cowboy god? I knew it when we visited."
"At first I didn't want to because he can be such an asshole. And then I didn't want to because he’s a Republican asshole, and that's worse. And then I didn't want to because, well, I didn't. I don't know. I started thinking that if I really liked him, I had to leave at the end of summer and I didn't want to fall for someone that hard if it's just a summer thing."
"Ever since I've known you," she said, "you've been the crazy party girl that everyone adored, but no one really knew. I got in there early and I've stayed there. No one else that I know of has. I'm glad that Will broke through. He's a keeper."
I nodded. He was.
Trust
"JUST FIVE MORE DAYS," I whispered Sunday night, lying in bed, leaning up against Will. "The kids leave after breakfast on Friday."
"Yeah," he answered, in his low rumble, against my neck, as he sucked on it, gliding his fingers up and down my bare arm. Letting out a sigh, he wrapped his arms around me in a big bear hug. "They gotta get here first, though." He squeezed me tight. "We got this." I relaxed and enjoyed his comforting warmth, trying to not think any more about the self-imposed sexual moratorium, and then drifted to sleep.
The next morning, a group of kids arrived at Headlands. They were entirely different than any previous group. This time we had twenty-five twelve and thirteen year olds from a Boys and Girls Club in East Los Angeles. Given the demographics of the area, I expected that they would all be Hispanic like me, and they were.
When the bus arrived, the children and leaders spilled out and I repeated the drill that I had done with the other groups, waving and enthusiastically greeting them. I noticed, immediately, that this group seemed quieter than the group from Oakland, the kids keeping amongst themselves, not chattering as much, and giving each other space, rather than mingling together.
One nervous-looking girl came up to me in the bunkhouse hall after she had set her duffle bag, sleeping bag, and pillow on a bottom bunk in the room. "I don't want to leave my things here. The door to the room doesn't lock."
"It’ll be safe, don't worry," I said.
She just looked at me. "Don't you have someplace, you know, safe, I can put them?"
"They'll be safe here," I repeated, and she looked at me skeptically and took off back down to the room. But she made me think. What would it be like if I didn't feel safe? If I didn't trust? Like how I trusted Will?
When they finished we went outside.
"Okay, guys," I said. "We are going to play a name game so that I can know who you are and what you like to do." I explained the game. We would go around in a circle and take turns saying our name and our favorite hobby. "I'm Marie and I like to eat vegan food."
The girl next to me, pretty, with shoulder length dark hair and glasses, said, "I'm Josephine and I like to listen to music, and this is Marie and she likes to eat vegan food." Then we continued with the next child, and so on.
Once we had gotten most of the way around the circle, the kids were starting to giggle at everyone's hobbies: "I like to eat gummy bears," "I like to play video games," "I like to watch YouTube," "I like to sleep in." Will walked by toward the end and I invited him to join us. Because he came in late to the game, he didn't have the advantage of hearing everyone repeating all the names twenty times. He tried to remember the children's names and failed miserably. "This is, uh, Danny—"
"David!" piped up a tiny boy in a Dodger t-shirt.
"Yeah, David, and he likes to play baseball—"
"No, play football."
I could see Will trying not to swear.
But he played along, asking David why he wore a baseball shirt if he liked football.
"Because it’s baseball season."
God, I loved my cowboy.
When we were done, I strode over to Will and whispered in his ear, "I think that participation in a name game earns you an extra treat on Friday."
"Holdin' you to that one," he responded, looking me in the eye, making me shiver even though it was hot out, and then sauntering to his truck.
"FOUR DAYS, DARLIN'," Will whispered in my ear that night as he spooned behind me. His breath against my neck set off a chain reaction of sensations in my body that wound up making me tense between my legs. "Nice work with the campfire tonight."
"Thanks," I whispered back. I flopped over and ran my fingers over his nipples and his pecs. But then he kissed me and that got a little out of control, tongues touching tongues, and we both had to pull back, breathing heavy.
We looked at each other.
"Night," I said hastily, at the same time that he said, "Night." He tucked me into him to go to sleep, both of us ignoring the feelings that were building: I had a wet throbbing between my legs and my breasts were heavy, and I could feel him poking me in the back, poor guy. I sighed and went to sleep.
The next day after breakfast, I took the kids to the corrals and they rode the horses under the watch of the wranglers.
I needed a break, so I ran into the ranch house, wandered down the hall, and opened the bathroom door to use it and collided into a naked, wet, William Charles Thrash III, owner of Headlands Ranch, standing, dripping shower water on a bath mat.
Figured.
He took one look at me, and his immediate pissed off look morphed into a full-on, out of control, male laugh, making him hold his toned tummy.
"You ever gonna learn to fucking knock?" he finally managed, wrapping a towel around his pelvis and then pulling me close to him. "Shit."
I’d lost control laughing, too, and hugged him back, probably drying him off in the process. "I don't think so. Especially not if these are the goodies I'm gonna get. Just lock the door if you don't want me barging in."
The Stars in the Sky (Giving You ... #2) Page 17